Hard contact lens have come into increasing use in recent years. After wearing of a hard lens for six months or more by an individual, the lens surfaces often become encrusted and/or scratched. The normal procedure is for the wearer to bring the lens to a contact lens fitter for polishing. Normally such lenses are not polished by the practitioner but are sent to the manufacturer for cleaning and repolishing. Because of the paperwork need to prepared the lens for shipment, its delivery to a laboratory and return to practioner after polishing, considerable time may elapse before the patient can resume wearing the lens again. Since many hard contact lens wearers no long have a pair of spectacles that provide satisfactory vision, this represents a significant handicap. Furthermore, this interruption in contact lens wearing may require a gradual readaption to the lens.
The fitter of the lens and the manufacturer carry out the polishing and cleaning procedure as a service which provides little or no profit to them because of the time and costs involved. Thus, fitters may tend to avoid polishing contact lenses when needed because of the inconvenience to practioner, patient, and manufacturer. When one considers that there are probably about ten million hard contact lens wearers in the United States, and that each wearer should have a cleaning each six months or so, the problems associated with their inadequate cleaning and polishing are seen to be large.